Former Occupier alleges OWS cult, rape cover up, financial fraud

Former Occupier Justin Samuels is talking. Some in OWS may not like what he has to say. But others would agree and Justin’s story may explain why OWS numbers and support have plummeted.

Justin joined Occupy in October 2011, not long after it started in September. Pro labor, Justin was interested in improving conditions for working people. A New York screenwriter, Justin wrote of the excitement of seeing people from all walks of life meeting together and interacting in the park in October.

Rape

But his excitement soon soured when rapes began to occur in the park and he was not happy with the Occupy response to the problem. “Obviously a number of people became concerned for their safety,” Justin said.

According to Justin, “people who call themselves “anarchists”” thought this should be handled internally. “That women raped should not call the police and this should be handled by Occupy. That police are the enemy and anyone who wants to talk to them is bad”.

As a result, many women left Occupy.

Rise of the Anarchists

As time went on, Justin recalled, the anarchist elements in Occupy seemed to drive anyone else out. Despite the fact that OWS received reportedly up to $750, 000, Justin noted that they refused to buy or rent apartments/ housing in which core occupiers could stay, primarily because their financial sponsor, Alliance for Global Justice, was opposed to it. However, they then paid a lot of money to churches to house the occupiers. Occupiers could stay overnight but then had to get out at 7 am and stay out all day, even in the winter. The reason for all this convolution may have been an attempt to get around the tax prohibition of not using donations for personal use, but it ended up being used for personal use anyway, seemingly in violation of tax prohibitions.

Justin noted in fact “the anarchist elements were even against homeless occupiers with medical or psychiatric problems applying for state resources like medicaid (and other forms of public assistance)”. He came to believe that they didn’t want people to get jobs or help, because if they did, they might leave the movement.

When suggestions that the poor find work came up in occupy, the anarchists referred to all jobs and all work as wage slavery. Never mind some of these young anarchists who wanted to prevent homeless people from getting jobs or access to social service resources are living at home being supported by their parents. Never mind that other anarchists used money from the general fund to support themselves. Their activism was basically an attempt to avoid having to work.

Fiscal questions

Questions have been raised about the money coming into OWS almost since it began. Money came in multiple ways, including through walk up donations at the park to contributions online by credit card. Over time, as was noted, a substantial amount was raised.

But concerns were never allayed and continue to this day, even with the money virtually expended. Despite demands by OWS that banks be transparent, it seems Occupy’s financial house was itself never quite in order, with Occupiers themselves continually asking for answers and feeling unhappy with the responses.

Various Occupiers in multiple meetings have alleged problems, lack of receipts, lack of transparency. Also the regular general assembly (GA) meetings at which such matters would normally be discussed have been discontinued so it is even harder to ask and get answers. Before going moribund, the GA put a freeze on new expenditures.

In one dust up exchange on the NYCGA (New York General Assembly) website about a week ago, Sean McKeown, offered the following defense of why there isn’t the desired “transparency”:

“There is a very simple reason we don’t have financial transparency – actions we were supplying with physical materials were not, 100% of the time, LEGAL. Receipts for canvas and paint three days before a banner drop could credibly be used in court against someone, so all along (without so much as a formal proposal, for those of us who come from outside of anarchistic culture and came after Day 1) the accounting plan of action has been to prevent information from seeing distributed posting unless it is absolutely necessary because people could go to jail.”

McKeown called it “security culture” accounting as opposed to “radical transparency” accounting. He then talks of Finance/accounting becoming an “affinity group”, which means the finance group would no longer be a working group and thus could theoretically operate independently not bound by the dictates of the GA.

Sean spoke of “trusted people” handling the action currently as opposed to the input from all that the GA represented:

while the group as a whole continues on with its work using highly distributed networks of individuals – essentially “trusted friend networks” – to assist with decision-making and mutual aid, distributed action and distributed decision-making still leading to forward progress even without a centralized decision-making body.

Justin said that finance actually blocked a number of proposals that had to do with activism but passed items that in his opinion made Occupiers dependent.

Finance had no problem with programs like church housing, free food, metro cards, clothes, medic, but they opposed attempts to start co ops. Co operative business might have led to formal employment for occupiers, and this was opposed by the anarchists who control finance.

Cult

That dependency came to be cult like, Justin recalled. Everything had to be done by consensus. “There was an almost religious devotion to arcane anarchist principles, regardless of whether they made sense”, he noted. Isolation from the rest of the world was encouraged by camping in parks and abandoned buildings so that members would have just each other, leaving aside any outsiders. Since many came from out of town, this further added to their dependence and connection to the group.

Some came with some mental or physical issue that was not attended to and which got worse while they were at Occupy. People were encouraged to go to “medics” that were voluteering with the group but who often had no real medical background, Justin said, as opposed to going to real doctors.

Media, discussions and tweets by Occupiers buttress Justin’s assessment. It is “us against the world” mentality, an almost holy cause, only we are the awakened ones who must awake others, this sense of holy quest bonding people together and giving them affirmation and meaning. They internalized the ethos that much of the world was out to do you wrong-media not to recognize you, banks and the evil 1% who just want your money. Police worst of all want to oppress you and brutalize you on behalf of the evil 1%. All in a conspiracy to control us. We must rise up in the streets to overthrow the control.

In the infamous Tom Cruise video about Scientology he talked about how as a Scientologist, one could “create new and better realities”. In Occupy’s reality, we live in a police state tied to the wheel of wage slavery, with the pittance allowed by our masters. It is the classic cult technique of redefining the world and what words mean, something of which L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology was fond. Police are violent and brutal if they wear riot gear. Occupiers who smash things aren’t violent. Violence can only be against a person but not against property. Thus they can say this is a non-violent protest, and mean it in their parlance, because smashing what they view as the power of the state is not violent.

All the issues finally caused Justin to leave in March. He and others are calling for a full vetting of all the finances. He also encouraged further investigation into the rapes and urged those who haven’t done so yet to come forward.

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9 responses

‘Cultish’ is what I thought watching some of the GAs. The bus pass issuance day after day, as if they were some type of talismans, was creepy. I’ve gone from mocking most of the Occupiers to pitying their delusions.

Strong Women Rules Working Group have been in the front line helping those Rape Victims, and ” We” Strong Women Rules Working Group have been going to Court and dealing with the system hope there be justice and peace for the victim. Tanya cast is coming up next follow by Dave Parker both was top raper 100% in the park, those two Rape’s so many innocents people it make satan look like a baby. Anyway, we are proud of Justin he is a Brotherhood of the Strong Women Rules Working Group and we keep the group/each other/ and the members up and inform on what’s going on. Nan was abused, attacked, harassed and threaten by members and several members of OWS when she was calling out corruptions.

I think its crap what you’re “reporting” about our medical staff we have licensed doctors nurses paramedics emts and trained street medics thank toy very much. During evaluation if someone needed care paddy our scope of practice they would be sent to a free clinic or hospital depending on the situation. You sir were never a part of the medical group or have talkedto any of us.shame on you for falsifying facts and only telling your opinions.

Saying occupy is full of anarchists is just another way the government controlled media tries to discredit the movement. It is propaganda that hides the truth, which is simple, shit is fucked up and its time that for charge.
Occupy is everyone, it is about not allowing people to die on the streets, it is about caring for your neighbor, it is about strenght in numbers and about asking one simple question that has been asked from the beginning of time, one which started the american revolution to the arab spring, from darwin to edision, from sea to shinning mother fucking sea, and this is what made us a great nation, and that is WHY. Why … Why are corporations people why are we paying taxes to the english, why are the police beating and macing people innocently protesting and expressing there constitutional rights of free speech.
Why?

Justin’s the least-credible, least involved person you could possibly have talked to, and literally nothing you’ve presented here is accurate. The only reasons I’m even responding to this are that a) many occupiers have expressed outrage about this piece and b) it’s an easy takedown.

One at a time.

First of all, the standing agreement in Zuccotti Park was that individuals who are the victim of a crime should dictate the means by which that crime is dealt, period. I’ve never heard an “anarchist” or anyone else say otherwise.

Many people distrust, for good reason, the “justice” system currently in operation within the United States, from cops to the Supreme Court — this is a valid opinion. It’s accurate to say that many occupiers have this opinion. It’s totally inaccurate to say that occupiers in general — and *especially* anarchists — would seek to make this opinion into a *rule*. And as I’ve said, just the opposite was understood to be true: solidarity dictates that the wishes of those victimized by any crime, particularly such a violent and terrible act, be respected.

Now, as for the rapes themselves, and as for this entire line of damned obvious smear attack that has been regurgitated by many a manipulative jerk totally uninterested in justice or the safety of women and transfolk:

Rapes often go unreported in our society, so there’s no way to definitively state how many times a sexual assault or rape was committed in Zuccotti Park. Only one rape was, to my knowledge, officially reported in the park.

All the rumors I personally ever heard of other assaults were easily traced to one constant provocateur (labeled as such due to a wide array of threatening behavior, including random punching, knife-wielding, and other forms of disruption including endless demagoguery, a pattern into which these unsubstantiated accusations fit). This is not to say that there were no other assaults; I cannot know this. But anyone who is saying that there were more and is not speaking from direct personal experience to the contrary is, how you say…. full of shit.

It should be unnecessary to say that In the United States, we have serious problems with sexual violence. It’s true. And that’s why rape is a “third rail” that is easy for defenders of the status quo to exploit. This type of meme warfare does nothing to advance solutions that might address the roots of sexual violence in our communities.

From the moment we heard an assault had happened in our community, steps were taken to address it. A greater emphasis was put on work being done by the (pre-existing) safer spaces working group, and to clarify how we would collectively deal with such a tragic harm. The safer spaces effort itself was taken by many sneering idiots as proof that we were doing something wrong, when in fact it’s a radical tool to prevent rape that was already in use (but not widely enough known). (The NY Post also took the opportunity to accuse us of creating a “carnival” in Zuccotti Park with the big tents that were designed to reduce isolated space in the occupation. Stay classy, NY Post).

So folks, when you hear someone bring up the word “rape” in relation to Occupy Wall Street, take a deep breath, and check the URL: yup, you’re at “citizenjournalistdotorg”…..”.wordpress.com”. Or you’re at BigGovernment, or BigHollywood, or the NY Post’s website.

Yup.

OK, part two: ANARCHISTS!

“Anarchist” is the new buzzword; everyone who hates the Occupy movement loves saying it. Seems they’re more in love with it than us anarchists are, and that’s saying something! The decision by voices of the status quo to use the word “anarchist” against OWS and other movements is a bigger topic, and one for a different novel-length blog comment. What we do about that is an interesting question. But the main point is, the word is being used by most of the people saying it because of its negative connotations, not its meaning. It’s a trap!

Someone else can give you a detailed history lesson of how anarchists have been smeared, hunted, assassinated through the centuries, but I’m just going to make sure you know one thing: anarchy, originally from Greek, consists of two parts; the prefix “an” meaning “without”, or “no”, and “archy”, or “rulers”. It means, no rulers. It doesn’t mean no rules, but all rules should derive from consent, not coercion or force. It doesn’t mean no leaders, though all should feel empowered to lead. It means, no individual should have power over another individual. (Collective power, built from the agency of an array of individuals, may be by nature greater than an individual’s).

This is a rudimentary (and somewhat personal, for me) definition. But let’s just be clear, “anarchist” doesn’t mean “terrorist” and it doesn’t mean violent and it doesn’t mean chaos-loving madman. Mostly the folks who use it to describe themselves are interested in radical self-reliance, mutual aid, and a healthy society, and more consistently than anything else, anarchists consistently believe that the state is an illegitimate or undesirable or unjust form of organization. Structurally, OWS is “anarchist”, but if you’re looking for the word’s dark, unearned connotation, please feel free to use the phrase “direct democracy” instead.

Now, for Justin’s particular accusations. Remember, as we read, that anarchists believe in NO RULERS.

“Despite the fact that OWS received reportedly up to $750, 000, Justin noted that they refused to buy or rent apartments/ housing in which core occupiers could stay, primarily because their financial sponsor, Alliance for Global Justice, was opposed to it.”

Despite the fact that OWS received reportedly up to $750,000… other things mattered too! Shocking. The GA never consensed on buying apartments or housing because no one came up with a workable (read: legal) plan to do it. The reason given was that we weren’t legally permitted, as a sponsored organization, to be a tenant. It’s possible AGJ could have stuck its neck out for us and assumed liability, and weren’t willing — I don’t blame them; given the city’s effort to make Occupy Wall Street NYC’s new public housing program, there would have been huge challenges and AGJ would have been taking a big risk. (Also, what does anarchism have to do with any of this?)

Here’s a real whopper:

“Justin noted in fact “the anarchist elements were even against homeless occupiers with medical or psychiatric problems applying for state resources like medicaid (and other forms of public assistance)”. He came to believe that they didn’t want people to get jobs or help, because if they did, they might leave the movement.”

If this were true, I wouldn’t be a part of Occupy Wall Street. Fortunately, this claim absolutely flies in the face of reality and has zero basis.

Public assistance is, for many occupiers — as for many Americans suffering in the economic crisis — a part of life. While I know many who prefer to make do without it, often in the face of enormous challenge, the idea that we would attempt to prevent needs from being filled is completely bonkers.

Notice, there’s no effort to interrogate what led Justin to the extremely funny and ironic conclusion that “anarchists” “didn’t want people to get jobs.” NO RULERS. OWS is built on consent, not just in theory, but in practice. Malcolm Harris recently called consensus, inclusion and transparency “survival traits coded in Occupy’s DNA.” This is simply true. No one is forced to do, or not do, anything, within OWS.

And jobs, of any sort, are part of the solution, and as such they’re part of OWS — the question, as always, is, “what do you want it to look like?” Many job opportunities and offers have been traded in Zuccotti Park and other occupied spaces. And OWS even funded efforts to build organizations that could employ folks — not corporate jobs, or as state employees, but in worker-owned co-operatives. These cooperatives, like every individual and group involved in OWS, are explicitly autonomous and could support or oppose whatever they liked. In no way does encouraging the construction of an alternative, just economy amount to an effort to isolate folks.

Also “the anarchists” are a vastly diverse group of people, many of whom tend to only seek consensus and thus speak as a whole when absolutely necessary, and none of whom used “money from the general fund to support themselves.” All absolutely baseless nonsense.

Oooookay, here we go: FISCAL QUESTIONS.

Oh my fucking God, nothing is more infuriating than watching wave after wave of obvious provocateurs attacking OWS’ bookkeeping. Never do they have any proof, never do they have any cause to believe there’s been wrongdoing. Here’s a little quote:

“Take down the money. Go after his infrastructure. The tools we are using to nail and de-construct Wiki are the same tools used to dismantle and track aQ [Al Qaeda]. Thank Cheney & 43 [former US President George W. Bush]. Big Brother owns his liberal terrorist arse.” – Fred Burton, former Deputy Chief of the Department of State’s (DoS) counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).

Did every single receipt get turned in? I fucking doubt it; shit happens. Have we had countless internal debates about what level of financial transparency is appropriate and safe? Yes, and it’s a reason why many folks didn’t want to have money at all. And did those conversations usually start and ALWAYS end with a provocateur tossing in poisonous, outrageous claims and accusations, and stirring the stew? Yes. And that’s true for the same reason this fear, uncertainty, and doubt is printed here. Fortunately, in reality — from the angle this website has taken — this is a non-topic, and there’s no reason to discuss it further in this forum.

For some reason, anarchists come up here again, though, and Justin repeats his ignorant nonsense:

“Finance had no problem with programs like church housing, free food, metro cards, clothes, medic, but they opposed attempts to start co ops. Co operative business might have led to formal employment for occupiers, and this was opposed by the anarchists who control finance.”

Finance (Accounting) never made decisions about what to fund, so the suggestion of their involvement here is baffling. Furthermore, despite the structural praxis of OWS, to call the members of finance “anarchists” is something I am fairly certain at least a few of them would raise an eyebrow at.

“That dependency came to be cult like, Justin recalled. Everything had to be done by consensus. “There was an almost religious devotion to arcane anarchist principles, regardless of whether they made sense”, he noted. ”

You know, I feel Justin here. It’s totally creepy that the British parliament follows parliamentary procedure — EVERY DAY, you know? It’s like, why wouldn’t they switch it up and try the ol’ House-and-Senate routine — at least ONCE. Jeez! It’s like… a religion!

No, wait. It’s like… a culture. In a political culture, what you do evolves over time, but is informed most importantly by what happened the day before. OWS is no different from anyone else in this regard.

” Isolation from the rest of the world was encouraged by camping in parks and abandoned buildings so that members would have just each other, leaving aside any outsiders. Since many came from out of town, this further added to their dependence and connection to the group.””

Justin is saying that folks push each other to depend only on each other, and to ignore outsiders. This is not true, and it’s easy to prove: there is no membership in OWS. There is no inside, there is no outside. There is only what people build together. To suggest that folks would isolate themselves — from what, and in conspiracy with what?

TL;DR: Justin Samuels wrote a long thing that made no sense and was full of lies and bitter delusions, some OWS-hating journalist reprinted it and tried to add a little more intentional malice to the mix, and I decided to take it seriously enough so that no one else needs to. Buried and gone.

DT: First of all, the standing agreement in Zuccotti Park was that individuals who are the victim of a crime should dictate the means by which that crime is dealt, period. I’ve never heard an “anarchist” or anyone else say otherwise.

JS: Standing agreement? Got proof of that? Something in writing. There is no standing agreement per se for this or almost anything in occupy. For the most part, its utter lawlessness. And this language is what I was talking about, occupiers are use arcane, cult processes.

DT: Many people distrust, for good reason, the “justice” system currently in operation within the United States, from cops to the Supreme Court — this is a valid opinion. It’s accurate to say that many occupiers have this opinion. It’s totally inaccurate to say that occupiers in general — and *especially* anarchists — would seek to make this opinion into a *rule*. And as I’ve said, just the opposite was understood to be true: solidarity dictates that the wishes of those victimized by any crime, particularly such a violent and terrible act, be respected.

JS: Here Dicey goes with the cultism of solidarity. If someone is a victim of a crime, OWS solidarity has nothing to do with the action. That victim has every right to report that crime to the relevant authorities. No “solidarity” is needed. Solidarity is used in this context as an arcane cult term. The focus is to get everyone to be in agreement on everything, so that this makes a victim feel like they aren’t in agreement by protesting or by going to the authorities. And notice Dicey said they were uncomfortable dealing with the authorities. So in “solidarity” the victim should do nothing, is basically what he wants.
Now, as for the rapes themselves, and as for this entire line of damned obvious smear attack that has been regurgitated by many a manipulative jerk totally uninterested in justice or the safety of women and transfolk:

DT: Rapes often go unreported in our society, so there’s no way to definitively state how many times a sexual assault or rape was committed in Zuccotti Park. Only one rape was, to my knowledge, officially reported in the park.

JS: Dave Parker and Tonye Iketubosin(a man who sexually assaulted two women in the park) were both arrested for sexual assaults in Zuccotti. So more than one rape was reported.

DT: All the rumors I personally ever heard of other assaults were easily traced to one constant provocateur (labeled as such due to a wide array of threatening behavior, including random punching, knife-wielding, and other forms of disruption including endless demagoguery, a pattern into which these unsubstantiated accusations fit). This is not to say that there were no other assaults; I cannot know this. But anyone who is saying that there were more and is not speaking from direct personal experience to the contrary is, how you say…. full of shit.

JS: GA records would indicate otherwise, as there were plenty of assaults in General Assemblies. A variety of people were responsible for the assaults.

DT: It should be unnecessary to say that In the United States, we have serious problems with sexual violence. It’s true. And that’s why rape is a “third rail” that is easy for defenders of the status quo to exploit. This type of meme warfare does nothing to advance solutions that might address the roots of sexual violence in our communities.

JS: Well, one way of reducing the likelihood of rape is to have people in secure, stable housing. Not by having people sleep together in big groups where you’ve lots of drugs and alcohol, which quite clearly are going to be contributing factors.

DT: From the moment we heard an assault had happened in our community, steps were taken to address it. A greater emphasis was put on work being done by the (pre-existing) safer spaces working group, and to clarify how we would collectively deal with such a tragic harm. The safer spaces effort itself was taken by many sneering idiots as proof that we were doing something wrong, when in fact it’s a radical tool to prevent rape that was already in use (but not widely enough known). (The NY Post also took the opportunity to accuse us of creating a “carnival” in Zuccotti Park with the big tents that were designed to reduce isolated space in the occupation. Stay classy, NY Post).

So folks, when you hear someone bring up the word “rape” in relation to Occupy Wall Street, take a deep breath, and check the URL: yup, you’re at “citizenjournalistdotorg”…..”.wordpress.com”. Or you’re at BigGovernment, or BigHollywood, or the NY Post’s website.

JS: Safer spaces led to no safer spaces as fights and assaults continued to happen. It was a complete laughable JOKE.

Yup.

DT: OK, part two: ANARCHISTS!

“Anarchist” is the new buzzword; everyone who hates the Occupy movement loves saying it. Seems they’re more in love with it than us anarchists are, and that’s saying something! The decision by voices of the status quo to use the word “anarchist” against OWS and other movements is a bigger topic, and one for a different novel-length blog comment. What we do about that is an interesting question. But the main point is, the word is being used by most of the people saying it because of its negative connotations, not its meaning. It’s a trap!

Someone else can give you a detailed history lesson of how anarchists have been smeared, hunted, assassinated through the centuries, but I’m just going to make sure you know one thing: anarchy, originally from Greek, consists of two parts; the prefix “an” meaning “without”, or “no”, and “archy”, or “rulers”. It means, no rulers. It doesn’t mean no rules, but all rules should derive from consent, not coercion or force. It doesn’t mean no leaders, though all should feel empowered to lead. It means, no individual should have power over another individual. (Collective power, built from the agency of an array of individuals, may be by nature greater than an individual’s).

JS: But occupy does have rulers. It has non leader leaders, who are all knowledgable in all the arcane anarchy practices, and who are more than willing to block proposals at the GA based on them. They are also very knowledgable on things like imaginary standing agreements, which they used to push their agenda out on General Assemblies.

DT: This is a rudimentary (and somewhat personal, for me) definition. But let’s just be clear, “anarchist” doesn’t mean “terrorist” and it doesn’t mean violent and it doesn’t mean chaos-loving madman. Mostly the folks who use it to describe themselves are interested in radical self-reliance, mutual aid, and a healthy society, and more consistently than anything else, anarchists consistently believe that the state is an illegitimate or undesirable or unjust form of organization. Structurally, OWS is “anarchist”, but if you’re looking for the word’s dark, unearned connotation, please feel free to use the phrase “direct democracy” instead.

JS: Occupiers did not help occupiers become self sufficient. Mutual Aid was there only to keep them coming back in the winter, so they’d continue to be a part of the cult.

DT: Now, for Justin’s particular accusations. Remember, as we read, that anarchists believe in NO RULERS.

“Despite the fact that OWS received reportedly up to $750, 000, Justin noted that they refused to buy or rent apartments/ housing in which core occupiers could stay, primarily because their financial sponsor, Alliance for Global Justice, was opposed to it.”

Despite the fact that OWS received reportedly up to $750,000… other things mattered too! Shocking. The GA never consensed on buying apartments or housing because no one came up with a workable (read: legal) plan to do it. The reason given was that we weren’t legally permitted, as a sponsored organization, to be a tenant. It’s possible AGJ could have stuck its neck out for us and assumed liability, and weren’t willing — I don’t blame them; given the city’s effort to make Occupy Wall Street NYC’s new public housing program, there would have been huge challenges and AGJ would have been taking a big risk. (Also, what does anarchism have to do with any of this?)

Here’s a real whopper:

“Justin noted in fact “the anarchist elements were even against homeless occupiers with medical or psychiatric problems applying for state resources like medicaid (and other forms of public assistance)”. He came to believe that they didn’t want people to get jobs or help, because if they did, they might leave the movement.”

If this were true, I wouldn’t be a part of Occupy Wall Street. Fortunately, this claim absolutely flies in the face of reality and has zero basis.

Public assistance is, for many occupiers — as for many Americans suffering in the economic crisis — a part of life. While I know many who prefer to make do without it, often in the face of enormous challenge, the idea that we would attempt to prevent needs from being filled is completely bonkers.

JS: Not bonkers. Occupy made no effort to refer homeless people to social services after the park closure. The housing group focused on housing people in churches. During housing meetings I personally attended, it was often said that OWS wasn’t social services, meaning they were not going to refer you to social services. Instead, they were going to house you in shelter situations where you had to leave the church at 7am (paid for by the general fund) stay outside all day, and come back to the church to sleep at night. And these people were actually DUMB enough to spend money on this kind of arrangement? In fact, if occupy had encouraged people to get work or social services, there’d be no need for the church housing program, no need for the free food, and no need for the so called medic services (made up of mostly unlicensed people who simply wanted to be “medics)

DT: Notice, there’s no effort to interrogate what led Justin to the extremely funny and ironic conclusion that “anarchists” “didn’t want people to get jobs.” NO RULERS. OWS is built on consent, not just in theory, but in practice. Malcolm Harris recently called consensus, inclusion and transparency “survival traits coded in Occupy’s DNA.” This is simply true. No one is forced to do, or not do, anything, within OWS.

JS: Again, this is an arcane, religious reference. People are supposed to care what Malcolm Harris called Occupy or anarchy. No one either knows or cares about Mr. Harris outside this sort of cult. Come back to reality, Dicey.

DT: And jobs, of any sort, are part of the solution, and as such they’re part of OWS — the question, as always, is, “what do you want it to look like?” Many job opportunities and offers have been traded in Zuccotti Park and other occupied spaces. And OWS even funded efforts to build organizations that could employ folks — not corporate jobs, or as state employees, but in worker-owned co-operatives. These cooperatives, like every individual and group involved in OWS, are explicitly autonomous and could support or oppose whatever they liked. In no way does encouraging the construction of an alternative, just economy amount to an effort to isolate folks.

JS: What cooperatives did OWS fund? And do they still exist? Every GA I attended where were proposals to get funding for co ops, finance blocked it and said OWS didn’t support businesses. After all, they were anarchists!

DT: Also “the anarchists” are a vastly diverse group of people, many of whom tend to only seek consensus and thus speak as a whole when absolutely necessary, and none of whom used “money from the general fund to support themselves.” All absolutely baseless nonsense.

JS: Dicey fails to explain why the finance committee cannot have 100% transparency if they weren’t living off of donated money. Dicey fails to explain how did the supposedly non working members of finance, who appeared well dressed and who had things such as cellphones, support themselves financially. Dicey fails to explain why there was outrage when a former member of finance released internal documents that showed extremely shady accounting.

DT: Oooookay, here we go: FISCAL QUESTIONS.

Oh my fucking God, nothing is more infuriating than watching wave after wave of obvious provocateurs attacking OWS’ bookkeeping. Never do they have any proof, never do they have any cause to believe there’s been wrongdoing. Here’s a little quote:

“Take down the money. Go after his infrastructure. The tools we are using to nail and de-construct Wiki are the same tools used to dismantle and track aQ [Al Qaeda]. Thank Cheney & 43 [former US President George W. Bush]. Big Brother owns his liberal terrorist arse.” – Fred Burton, former Deputy Chief of the Department of State’s (DoS) counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).

JS: Is Dicey comparing occupy to Al Queda? I did no such thing ,but it seems like Dicey is linking the two.

DT: Did every single receipt get turned in? I fucking doubt it; shit happens. Have we had countless internal debates about what level of financial transparency is appropriate and safe? Yes, and it’s a reason why many folks didn’t want to have money at all. And did those conversations usually start and ALWAYS end with a provocateur tossing in poisonous, outrageous claims and accusations, and stirring the stew? Yes. And that’s true for the same reason this fear, uncertainty, and doubt is printed here. Fortunately, in reality — from the angle this website has taken — this is a non-topic, and there’s no reason to discuss it further in this forum.

JS: So not all the receipts got turned in, according to Dicey. Depending on how much was spent, this can be fairly significant. Dicey then ADMITS to extremely convenient accounting to cover up fraud, basically. Only he wants to justify it.

DT: For some reason, anarchists come up here again, though, and Justin repeats his ignorant nonsense:

“Finance had no problem with programs like church housing, free food, metro cards, clothes, medic, but they opposed attempts to start co ops. Co operative business might have led to formal employment for occupiers, and this was opposed by the anarchists who control finance.”

Finance (Accounting) never made decisions about what to fund, so the suggestion of their involvement here is baffling. Furthermore, despite the structural praxis of OWS, to call the members of finance “anarchists” is something I am fairly certain at least a few of them would raise an eyebrow at.

JS: Members of finance not only participated in the GA, they brought proposals to the GA. A prominent member of finance, when confronting accusations of improper bookkeeping, consistently spoke of anarchist processes when dealing with things.

“That dependency came to be cult like, Justin recalled. Everything had to be done by consensus. “There was an almost religious devotion to arcane anarchist principles, regardless of whether they made sense”, he noted. ”

You know, I feel Justin here. It’s totally creepy that the British parliament follows parliamentary procedure — EVERY DAY, you know? It’s like, why wouldn’t they switch it up and try the ol’ House-and-Senate routine — at least ONCE. Jeez! It’s like… a religion!

JS: The British Parliament is not trying to courage everyone to live and operate in the same space. Parliament members have lives and careers outside of Parliament, something which OWS tries to discourage. Parliament members are responsible for their own housing, food, etc. Parliament members get income for their work. When I suggested people in OWS for certain tasks get income for their work, I was told income was wage slavery by the anarchists. Quite clearly, occupiers hated income because it would have enabled dependent people to have lives outside of occupy. This is classic cult behavior. I’ve spoken to psychologists on the matter. Cult members are very willing and able to debate on matters that deal with their beliefs, as its how they want to attract new members. What upsets them, though is criticisms of their sacred processes. Notice how Dicey keeps mentioning sacred Occupy and anarchy practices. Poor man has been totally brainwashed by the cult.

DT: No, wait. It’s like… a culture. In a political culture, what you do evolves over time, but is informed most importantly by what happened the day before. OWS is no different from anyone else in this regard.

JS: I feel for you Dicey. You drank the kool aid, dude.

DT: ” Isolation from the rest of the world was encouraged by camping in parks and abandoned buildings so that members would have just each other, leaving aside any outsiders. Since many came from out of town, this further added to their dependence and connection to the group.””

Justin is saying that folks push each other to depend only on each other, and to ignore outsiders. This is not true, and it’s easy to prove: there is no membership in OWS. There is no inside, there is no outside. There is only what people build together. To suggest that folks would isolate themselves — from what, and in conspiracy with what?

JS: You know exactly what, as occupy is all about solidarity with each other. There’s no membership in any cult. They are happy to bring in as many people as they can.

DT: TL;DR: Justin Samuels wrote a long thing that made no sense and was full of lies and bitter delusions, some OWS-hating journalist reprinted it and tried to add a little more intentional malice to the mix, and I decided to take it seriously enough so that no one else needs to. Buried and gone.

JS: What am I supposedly bitter about, Dicey? If it made no sense, why did you feel the need to address it? And if its just something posted by an OWS hating journalist, why didn’t you just ignore it? Unless you felt there was truth in it?